Album Review - The Wonder Of You: Elvis Presley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

3/5

Thirty-nine years since Elvis’s death, the deluge of ‘new’ Presley releases show little sign of receding. There have been 13 posthumous Presley albums in the past two years alone. Now there comes another: a revisiting of some of the King’s most iconic ballads with newly recorded accompaniment by London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The classical augmentations are for the most part respectful and understated. A swirl of strings and horns fleshes out the bottomless melancholy of ‘Always On My Mind’ while ‘The Wonder Of You’ negotiates the artery-clogging embellishment more or less unscarred.

Yet there are moments when the urge to over-egg proves irresistible, with ‘Suspicious Minds’ floundering under layers of treacly strings and ‘I Just Can’t Help Believin’, a tune plenty dramatic to begin with, weighed down with over-wrought brass and an instrumental break that sucks the track’s lifeblood.

The Wonder Of You was conceived by Elvis’s 71-year-old ex-wife Priscilla, who has devoted the latter half of her life to keeping Presley in the public eye. She has stated in recent interviews that her former husband was a devotee of classical music and would have entirely approved of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s ministrations.

“I’m aware that there are a lot of Elvis purists out there, but he and the Royal Philharmonic fit so well,” she said .“People don’t realise that he loved classical music: he would listen to Brahms and Mozart, as well as gospel and blues.”

That may be so and, with an earlier hook-up with the same orchestra, 2015’s If I Can Dream, selling more than two million units worldwide, the financial imperatives for the new project are clear . Yet the best bits here are when the orchestra is scarcely noticeable and Elvis has the floor to himself. It’s when he is shoved aside that the whiff of cash-in becomes hard to ignore.